


Ill

by lookingdead



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2017-12-10 01:38:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/780289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lookingdead/pseuds/lookingdead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat is ill. Kanaya attempts to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was the first homestuck fic I wrote, but I never posted it until now. I really just wanted to write an elaborate fever dream, though, so be warned that i may have gone overboard.

You lay on the couch in the common room, staring up at the dark black ceiling that feels miles above your head. Its distance seems to throb and convulse with your heartbeat, which is thumping sickly in your fingertips and making your hands feel too large for their size. The ceiling gets closer and further and closer and further, black as death and occasionally twitching and squirming with phosphenes and radio static.

You feel like you’re falling straight down into the sky. 

You must have done something wrong when you fell asleep, you think, must not have done it right because this was just wrong and you want the thrumming in the ceiling to stop. You must have… done something… Maybe didn’t do something to your thinkpan or…

You don’t know what thoughts are sloshing through your aching skull, but you take your delusive word for it. Something absurd tells you must have done something wrong, put the wrong spine in maybe…. That’d do it…

You look away from the spasming ceiling at a soundless, “Hey, bro, you all right?” and turn your attention to Gamzee who is a year or two younger than he was yesterday. He rubs his eye and you notice his finger slide under his eyelid and around his orange sclera, though you don’t feel the need to look away.  
His face is leaking grape jelly out of slices in thick white plastic. You try to answer his question but feel only forced air pushed passed tightly pressed and deeply numbed lips. It is voiceless and futile and quickly determined as an unimportant detail. 

An icy cold hand presses onto your forehead and covers your eyes so you no longer have to watch as your subconscious falls through the ceiling. “You have a fever, Bro? It’s hard to tell when you’re always boiling.” 

His voice comes out too fast and too slow at the same time, speeding at you like light up noise held down with tar. It’s a gravely noise, too. Not normal.  
You look to the side from underneath his plaster palm. Your eyes are guided to a small barkbeast in the corner with a long needle for a nose and shiny red apple peel skin.  
Oh, him again. He’s still there… 

You really don’t like him at all. He’s there a lot, you think, though in all honesty you haven’t seen his shiny red flesh before in your life. Something’s telling you you’ve seen him somewhere… Maybe you cant remember because you did something wrong. You’ve ruined your thinkpan forever this time. 

Gamzee’s hand feels hard and heavy like a porcelain statue. You’d like him to move it. It’s really uncomfortable and starting to hurt a bit. You stare up at his milky palm once more. It’s coated in static too. 

You feel something hard and sharp dig into your abdomen, pointing down into your flesh but not piercing it. There’s weight behind it.  
You are outside your body for a moment to take a look at what it is. You see glossy cherry flesh, four legs, liquid-ink eyes, and a foot long needle-nose.  
Oh. Oh. Oh no no no no. You don’t want him near you. You don’t want him near you. You don’t want that, n-no, no no no. 

You squirm inside your skin, try to move away and find you can’t. You really must’ve done something wrong before you went to sleep. Must’ve… done something… You can’t move. You try to scream, try to tell Gamzee his hand is getting just too heavy, try to scream to scare off the barkbeast, try to tell Gamzee to shoo him off, try to yell for Kanaya, for Terezi, for anyone anyone anyone, but there is nothing nothing nothing because your lips are sealed and numbed. 

You feel another sharp and stake-like jab in your stomach. No no no, send him back back back, back away, no. You know how he gets his color, right? He get’s his color because he eats apples and cherries and strawberries and tomato sauce and boiled clawcreatures and poppy petals and rose thorns and red red red. You know that, right? It bathes his skin in carmine. 

And your blood has been dyed with cadmium and flows red hot and scarlet under your skin.  
You feel another stab and you just want him to go away. You feel his nose, sharp and glistening metal, up near your neck, and you’re drowning in your heartbeat. You really wish Gamzee would just- And why couldn’t Kanaya show up? Or anyone, really? You’d even be satisfied with Dave.

Goddammit, what did you do wrong? What did you do wrong? Why couldn’t you move? Why why why? You try to yell and scream or just choke out anything that might be relatively close to a vocation, but everything dissipates into quiet smoke as it seeps through your lips.  
You feel a step on your chest. 

No. No no no. No more. No more. Stop. Stop. Stop. 

STOP

You manage to swat at something feebly and quite drunkenly. Your hand smacks hard against plaster, a loud reverberation retaliating from the wall. You look at the molding as you lay on the cold floor, drenched in a layer of sweat, for less than a second before pulling yourself into a sitting position.

Your crabtop slides off your stomach, pointed legs finally ceasing to dig into your abdomen, and crashes beside you. You growl at it because now is not the time for this shit and you just don’t give a damn about the stupid thing.

Your head swims as you haul yourself up. Your leg are stiff and liquidly at the same time and everything aches. However, none of that even registers to you as an urgent sense of nausea fills you up and threatens to overflow. 

You hurry to the door of the room you’ve claimed as your respiteblock and make your way down the lightless hallway. It’s too dark even for you to see with no excess light for your eyes to amplify. Your eyes were made to steal moonlight on dim nights, not for black tunnels on dank meteors. 

You walk as quickly as you can and speed up further as your body forces you to wretch. The ablutionblock is just down the hallway. It’s just down the hallway. It’s so close. You just need to go a bit further, just a bit further, if you just go a little bit faster, you can-

You throw up on the floor just outside the ablutionblock door because you’re a pathetic wiggler or something. Your digestivesac heaves and you expel anything that you may have eaten, which couldn’t have been much because you’ve been horribly nauseated for hours now. 

Goddammit, why couldn’t you have just gotten a little bit further? Now someone’s going to have to clean this shit up, you asshole. Probably you.  
Your throat burns and your mouth tastes acidic and disgusting and now your legs and hands are shaking and you feel like passing out as you are forced to heave one or two more times. 

You steady yourself with a hand on the wall as you straighten up. The door to the ablutionblock whirs as it slides open as you enter. You flick on the light and your eyes are assaulted with boiling white light. 

You lean on the sink, which offers a welcome coolness to your scalding palms. Goddammit, stop shaking… 

Your insides take an oversensitive approach to dealing with that brief spell of movement and you lean over the drain, fearing that you might vomit again. You lean lower and lower, your hair hanging in thick tangled webs of silken shadows around your face. 

You wait a second or two and when you’ve thoroughly determined that your bilesac is under moderate control for the moment, you turn on the faucet and let the cool water run. You cup some of it in your hands and pour it over your face in an attempt to rid your mind of illy distorted sleep. 

Your dream is already cracking into bits and dissolving away, but that cherry red barkbeast with the syringe nose is still stuck behind your eyelids and it makes you squirm more than you feel it should. 

Goddammit, that thing, stabbing into your guts or into your spine or your neck.

God…

You pull the cup marked as yours from its place on the counter, fill it up, and try and wash the taste of sick from your tongue. 

You have no idea what to do now, though. Maybe just… go back to sleep or something. Find somewhere more comfortable this time, and maybe try and put the crabtop somewhere where it won’t end up on top of you. You can’t remember if you were actually using it before you passed out or not. The damn thing likes to get up and walk around sometimes. You really should just pull its legs off or something. It’s a pain in the ass. 

You could just pile up some pillows or something. There’s also the couch in the common roo- you have no desire to be there at this present moment.  
You’re going to have to just collect all of the pillows in your respiteblock and curl yourself into a ball. You haven’t changed the sopor in your recouprecoon in a while, mostly because there is a bit of a permanent scarcity of sopor at the moment, and it’s starting to get a bit too thick and discolored and you don’t want to know how many skin cells have built up in it. 

Not sleeping in sopor, though, is probably just asking for more of those dreams. 

You stare into the glossy porcelain of the sink and at your cloudy shadow of a reflection in its surface. You’re worried that if you move you’ll just be sick again. 

“Karkat?” There is a metallic rapping on the door and an inquiry of, “Are you alright?” The voice is feminine and clean with a practiced precision and most obviously Kanaya. 

You groan quietly and answer with, “Yeah, m’fine.”

Your voice manages to come out louder than you’d been anticipating given the current shakiness wracking your limbs and the fatigue crushing your muscles and joints into mush. 

“Well, I’m just wondering considering it seems you threw up out here,” she says calmly. 

You stare at the sink some more. Is it getting closer? You don’t think you’re leaning forward, but… You blink dazedly and attempt to shake off the distortion.

“I said I’m fine.”

There is a pause during which you’re not quite sure where your vision is directed.

“May I come in?” she asks in her serene and smooth tone. 

“No,” you say. “No. I’m… Naked. And shitting. Don’t come in.”

“Uh, huh…” she voices, half disbelievingly. “Well, I’m sorry if I bothered you, I suppose. Just tell me if you need anything. Especially if you’re sick.”

“Mhmm, okay,” you say. You then hear her walk away.

You have no plans of talking to her later or asking her for anything or whatever she had in mind. After a few more moments of breathing and calming yourself, you make the sightless and shaky wander back to your respiteblock. 

The door slides open and your digestivesack is churning from every step you had to force your legs to execute and from every little motion your body swayed through to get here. 

You hold your breath and grab every pillow or blanket or soft thing you can find in here, which really isn’t much, and throw it into the corner. In the end, there is just a little cluster of wrinkled fabric and worn out, packed down stuffing wrapped up in ragged fibers and some pathetic half finished thing you’d constructed when Rose had attempted to teach you how to knit still attached to a ball of yarn. 

You let your head fall on it and wrap yourself up in the blanket as you curl into yourself. You’re mostly on cold hard floor. You don’t care. You just tuck further into the corner and roll yourself as tightly in the blanket as you can. 

You pass out and your dreams swirl in and out like a phantasmic tide that leaves you sick and ashen with scarlet blush as your subconscious swims and drowns. 

Your eyes flicker open when a bright white light intrudes on your retinas through your eyelids. A hand is on your forehead, cold with a creamy palm and calloused fingertips. 

“I didn’t mean to wake you up,” Kanaya says. “I was just checking to see if you had a fever. I’m sorry.” 

She pushes herself up and fixes her skirt. “But since you are awake, I’d really like to get you a thermometer, perhaps. I’m really kind of concerned.” 

“M’fine,” you insist loudly as you squeeze your eyes shut against Kanaya’s softly glowing flesh. “Lemme sleep.”

“I definitely plan on allowing you to sleep,” she says. “I just don’t want you to end up letting yourself get worse.” 

You let a groan flow from your chest as you cover your face with the blanket, pulling it off of your toes and exposing them to unpleasantly cool air. You try to tuck them in closer, but you’re already pretty much in the tightest ball you can manage. 

You feel a cool hand slip against the back of your neck. She hums thoughtfully. “Im not sure what your normal body temperature is, so I can’t be sure if this is abnormal for you, but it’s still quite disconcerting. Do you feel like you have a fever?”

“Yes,” you half groan, half snap. “Im fucking cold and hot at the same time. I want to sleep.” 

Feeling weak and ill like this is only making you more irritable than normal. You really really despise your body for making you feel so wrong and haven’t got any patience, even for Kanaya who normally receives the last drops of your last reserves of patience. 

She “hmm…“‘s some more and otherwise leaves silence as she thinks things over. 

“I’m not expecting you to get up, but just in case, stay here. I will be back momentarily,” she tells you before you hear her footsteps fade into the hall.  
You readjust your blanket and move the pitifully flat pillow so that it is properly under your head again. You slip back into a diluted sleep where you have a hard time telling the difference between dream and reality. 

God, you keep seeing that red barkbeast, and you swear that every time you see it, it just gets thinner and bonier. It prods your neck with its nose, sharp as it starts to slip into your skin, and no no no you’re not doing this. Your eyes snap open. 

And then they loll inside your skull as your eyelids argue about weather they should close or not. When they finally make the decision to slide shut, there are red bones wrapped in shiny cherry skin and a needle to your neck.

So you force them open again, because god dammit, you do not like him and you don’t want to see him and god why does everything have to be awful and disgusting and bad?

You cannot keep yourself conscious, though, and your eyes slip closed against your will. And then the red thing is back and god dammit why can’t you just stay awake?

You force yourself awake one last time just as Kanaya reenters your respiteblock. The pale moony glow of her skin keeps your eyes from drifting into dreams.  
“Here we are,” she sighs as she throws open an enormous blue blanket and drops it on top of you. 

You groan in response.

“I also want you to drink this,” she says. You pull the blanket off of your face to see she is handing you a glass of water.

You begrudgingly push yourself up onto your elbows and reach up to take the cool thing in one of your hands. You let yourself lay back down on your back, holding the glass so that it doesn’t spill and not knowing what configuration is going to both be comfortable and allow you to drink this without spilling it down your front. 

“And one more thing,” she says.

And then her hand is on your forehead again for a moment. Why does everything and everyone on this meteor have to be so fucking cold? 

“Put this under your tongue,” she tells you after she removes her hand. She hands you a little glass thermometer.

You take it in your free hand and do as you’re told. Then she crosses her legs and sits down next to you. She takes the glass back as well when it’s clear there is no way for you to drink it. She places it on the floor between the two of you. 

“I’ll leave you be in a moment if that’s what you want,” she says. “But I’m still going to keep checking on you periodically.”

“Fine,” you say through your teeth and the thermometer. 

She leans on her hand and stares at the floor. Her soft glow seeps through the tiny holes in her sweater, which you are presuming was made by Rose. It’s black and has her emerald sign stitched into the right side of the chest. 

After a few minutes of not entirely uncomfortable silence, she pulls the thermometer out of your mouth and looks carefully at its red filling. 

“You haven’t told anyone, have you?” you ask as soon as your mouth is unobstructed. 

She pauses a second, still examining the thermometer, before telling you, “Well, I’ve mentioned it to Rose, but I haven’t told anyone else.”

You sigh. “Well, could you, maybe, not tell anyone else?” 

“I wont if I don’t have to if that’d make you feel better,” she tells you.

“Alright. Good…” You don’t particularly like the idea of looking pathetic in front of everyone. You’d rather just hide here until this goes away.

”My current concern, though, is that you have a seemingly very high fever which very much needs to diminish. I’m also concerned of what might happen if everyone else ends up with whatever this is,” she says. 

“It’ll be fine. It’s not that serious,” you insist. 

“If you think so,” she says, standing up again. “I’m going to go get a washcloth for your forehead. And also see what to do about cleaning up after you…”  
“Sorry about that…” you say, thoroughly embarrassed. 

“Don’t worry about,” she tells you. 

And then she leaves and comes back one last time. In between which you attempt to sit up and take a drink of water. You manage to not get much on yourself, though a bit dribbles on your shirt. 

The water is pleasantly cool without being icy and seems to cool down your apparently burning insides. 

She comes back with a cold wet washcloth and drapes it over your forehead, soaking wet and soothing. 

Her brow is creased and her eyes are concerned and wary. Her irises are turning, as yours are, with their centers stained with mint and teal and violet. Everyone’s eyes go a little funny in that in-between stage. The colors don’t always seem to make sense. 

Your eyes had been blue for a while, but they had recently faded into amethyst. One of them is changing faster than the other and is looking a bit pinkish too. Your reflection really isn’t a pleasant one at the moment. Not that it ever really had been. 

You had only glanced at the mirror in the bathroom, but you know you are a tangle wreck of thick black ink-smatter hair and lips encrusted with a layer of rusty scabs. You know your eyes are framed with dark bags and you know your teeth have gotten yellow and that one has chipped and that your overbite isn’t something you’re growing out of. 

“Do you want me to bring you a different pillow?” Kanaya asks. 

It makes your insides sting for some reason. All of this does, all that she’s doing. You don’t know why.

You shake your head. “No.” 

There’s nausea rolling through you still and your head is deeply entrenched in a boiling fog. Your eyes slip closed again. Everything in your body is begging for sleep, though you still fear the dreams. 

“Alright. If you’re sure,” she says. “I’ll be back to check on you later. I want you to rest.” 

“That’s what I’ve been trying to do…” you mumble. You don’t mean it aggressively. 

“What?”

You make an incoherent noise and curl back up into a ball. You fix the nice cold cloth so that it stays and fall back to sleep in what feels like less than a second.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have finally after for goddamned ever finished the second half of this story. Here we go....

Your dreams are awkward and come in spasms, shaking your subconscious so much that you’re not entirely sure what’s real now.

Some dream gave you the idea that you had leeches, somewhere, little white ones, all squishy and slimy and biting hard with little tiny needle teeth into your aching stomach, and you think that, yes, that would explain the nausea and the sickness, and yes, that’s logical, you must have leeches.

You accept this for a few moments in which your level of consciousness is questionable and you do not realize the absurdity of this until you manage to pry the lids off your eyes. 

You internally kick yourself for even giving those dreams a chance at being interpretable as reality, but considering your current state of illness and the incessant dream bubbles on this stupid meteor, coming to that conclusion was only predictable. 

You stare up at where the ceiling was and see only stars. You think it is another dream, but then it just seems too solid, too real, the stars too bright and the sky too black, and the smattering of starlight is too still and static to be anything but real.

You think that maybe you just fell asleep on the roof and don’t remember but there are no stars in the void there is only a black wall that keeps going and going, stretching on and on and on and on and on and on and-

You inhale and exhale. 

You are drenched in a layer of icy sweat and your whole body is shivering. Your back feels damp and your hair is plastered to your forehead. Actually, you realize, everything feels kind of cold and damp. Your fingers grip at the ground. 

Grass.

You’re lying in grass.

Very solid, very real, very tangible, grass. 

You’re in a dream bubble. 

You have the option, here, of either letting yourself fall asleep and have your dream projection wander around the bubble until you exit, or you can just get up now and wander around yourself. 

You figure should probably let your body rest.

This decision is made mostly through the observations that your limbs feel half-dissolved and that you’re positive that if you move you’ll throw up again. 

It’s just that the ground is damp and hard and uncomfortable, and there’s the nagging thing in your head, the well-learned impulse from the first 6 sweeps of your life, telling you that you should never ever sleep outside. You know, you know, that sleeping on the ground risks, firstly, the cold ground sapping your body heat and sending you into hypothermia. You also run the risk of sleeping too long and waking up drenched in boiling sunlight and wrapped in partly cooked flesh. 

This is a dream bubble, though, which means the cold is only there because your brain is telling you it is. It’s all just an illusion. It’s not really there.

So you let your eyes slip closed.

When you fall sleep, or perhaps wake up, you peel yourself out of your body and take a few steps away. Your nausea is gone, entirely, but you still feel definitely ill; off, wrong. 

You feel strangely confused and your perception of the dream bubble has changed, like you can’t look directly at anything. All the colors fade and twitch back and forth between being too bright and too dull. 

You glance at your body, and you look absolutely disgusting, which is usual, but in this case you look more disgusting than normal. 

You just look exhausted and sick and your skin is a paler, almost bluish grey. Your lips are shriveled and scabby and your eyes are ringed with burgundy. You’re also snoring, which is gross.

You waste no more time before turning around and leaving your sick meat puppet of a body behind. 

The grass ends just a few feet in front of you, dipping into sand and then into lapping waves that twinkle with starlight. 

The sand is soft and pink under your feet that are suddenly bare. You must've taken your shoes off. They're in your right hand now, anyway. Dream memories tend to get chopped into a lot of little chunks and sometime some of those chunks get squashed or lost and just don't work right anymore.

You walk down to the shoreline and let the dream ocean take your feet and you try to force yourself to forget that you're dreaming. The waves swallow you quickly and you can even feel the cold on your skin. 

The candy colored shore shrinks away and the phantasmic ocean caresses your chin. The water holds you close and the soft feeling of the floor becomes a privilege to only the very tips of your toes. 

You let the waves swallow you.

You find that you don't have trouble breathing and theres something about that that makes something undeniably and unavoidably proud burns bright in your throat. Your mouth curves just a bit and you swim deep down. The cool and calm overwhelms you, coddles you and lets you flow. Your eyes are framed with thrumming rainbows of static, but you can pull air from water. 

Until the water starts to bleed into the sky. It thins and each stroke of your arm starts to become more of a grappling flail. 

Your arms swing through cold and humid air as your ears whistle with the deafening wail of the fleeting heavens. You crash through purple haze and whatever bubble you were in is gone gone gone.

You hit deathly red liquid roses and it tastes just like metal. 

The red washes you in its color, drowns you in it, leaving the grey of your skin meaningless and lost beneath its vividness. Your lungs choke on the strong smell of rusty carnage. You close your eyes, but you can taste it. You can taste it so well. It coats your tongue and mouth and throat. It stains your teeth and gums. 

You feel sick again. You can't tell where you head is, though there are a few times you manage to tear it free from the waves of red. You gasp and spit. You wretch and choke. You stretch and grasp. You find, you find, you cannot believe it, but you find with the very tips of your fingers, the solace of sharp rocks. 

They're sticky with red as you grasp at their broken angles. Your feet scrape against their edges and manage to locate something flat. You blindly grab until you find the edge of the shore and drag yourself from the red.

You lie down on your back, panting. 

You raise your hand over your face. It is dripping red. Your heaving chest is completely soaked in rubies. You've been dyed in it. 

The sky pulses above you. Your sense of space diminishes. You remember this happening. You remember it happening before. Have you had this dream before? You think you have it often but... but no, wait, no, wait.

No no. This happened once during the game. You accidentally fell in one of your rivers on your planet. 

You hate your planet. 

Nausea begins to creep into you.

You stare up at the hazy sky, at the veil of misty purple clouds. It's warping with your breath. Your view is suddenly obstructed by a face you think you've seen before.

You recall the shape of her lips, the sharp little perfectly straight needle teeth stretched wide into a smile, but not the brightness of her makeup, the blankness of her eyes, the shape of her glasses, the style of her hair.

Her braids hang down and border your head as you lay below her covered in imaginary red.

“You're a fuckin' mess, bro,” she says. She speaks so smoothly, but there's something so off about the noise. It's like you're still under water. 

Your mouth tastes like the dead and your lips stick together when you try to open them. Your tongue is glued to your mouth. Your throat is tight. 

More words drip off her lips and dissolve into steam.

You feel overwhelmingly awful and sick.

You stand up in your respiteblock and pull yourself from your sheets and bolt to the bathroom. You throw up in the load gaper this time. 

 

There are little blurred chunks of other realities clinging to the walls and floors of your ablution block. There are bright colored splotches of Prospit gold smeared on the walls and a half of a door slapped into the eastern wall. 

You wash your face and try to breathe. 

The other side of the room, on the far far side next to the large bathing tubs that some of the higher bloods had, when they'd been there to insist upon them when they'd been there when they'd been there when they'd been when they'd been when they'd been

The other side of the room, on the far far side next to the large bathing tubs that some of the high bloods had, when they'd been there to insist upon them, been there been there been there been there when they'd when they'd when when when

The other side of the room, on the far far side next to the large bathing tubs that some of the higher bloods had, when they'd been there to insist upon them before they had been before they had been before they had been smattered color gleaming organs ripped and broken and gone before they had been before they had been

The other side of the room, on the far far side next to the large bathing tubs that some of the hignext to the the bathing tubs, large ponds of red bled in from from some memory of yours. Jagged rock invaded stainless steal and attractive white plastic. The cool colored tiles that made up the smooth floors and walls of the tubs were obstructed by deathly black stones. 

You pull yourself up onto the sink counter as you notice that the cherry pool is slowly expanding and creeping toward your shoes. You cross your legs and sit between two sinks and scroll through your palmhusk in hopes that something, anything interesting might be there. 

The communal ablution block on the 6th floor in the 3rd shortest western tower is the closest one to your preferred respiteblock. The 3rd shortest western tower has also become  
the main living building. It's where most people are expected to be. When they are not there, there is concern. 

You made a rule that no one is supposed to spread too far out. You've got to keep track of these assholes. Particularly the humans. Mostly the humans. 

Mostly Dave.

You don't want to lose her. You just don't want to lose her. Really, really. You can't lose her. You can't lose anymore people but god dammit, you're pathetic. You're so pathetic.

CG: HAS IT OCCURED TO YOU THAT YOU'VE BECOME *THAT* ASSHOLE? BECAUSE YOU'VE BECOME THAT ASSHOLE. 

Not pitiable pathetic, either. Just grossly, undeservingly, horribly pathetic.

CG: YOU ACTED COMPLETELY, EXCUSE THE SHIT OUT OF THE TERM, BLIND TO HER ADVANCES, MADE FUN OF HER, AND THEN GOT MAD WHEN SHE DIDN'T WANT TO PUT UP WITH YOUR CRAP ANYMORE.

Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. 

CG: SHE ISN'T YOURS, DUMBFUCK. THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS.

Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck fucking you.

CG: YOU FUCKED UP. YOU DID IT WRONG. YOU WANTED TO JAM HER INTO EVERY QUADRANT LIKE A POSESSIVE PIECE OF SHIT AND THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS.

You just you just you just you don't want to lose her no one's ever complimented you before you don't want to lose her you just you just. 

CG: I KNOW. GO HAVE A NICE LONG CONVERSATION WITH YOUR ASSHOLE INSTEAD OF ME FOR ONCE. SEE IF YOU CAN CONVINCE IT TO RELINQUISH THE UNDYING GRIP IT HAS ON YOUR SELFOBSESSED SKULL.

He's from at least a year and a half from now. How could he possibly even fucking remember of course that's dumb that's dumb that's so dumb that's a horrible excuse of course he remembers of course he does. 

CG: YOU KNOW, THE AMOUNT OF TIME I SPENT IN THESE MASTERBRATORY SELF-TO-SELF CHATS IS DISTURBING AND HAS REALLY DONE NOTHING AT ALL FOR ME BESIDES MAKE ME HATE YOU EVEN MORE AS WELL AS ON OCCASSION MAKE ME QUESTION IF THERE'S ACTUALLY A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HATE AND PITY.

High and fucking mighty though he may be. 

He is a vile and awful thing. You could sink your claws into his fat neck, into his pudgy face, into the skin of his wrists, into the surface of his thigh. 

Your gut still aches and you wonder if it'll ever stop. It occurs to you that you're shaking rather hard. You curl into your knees. 

You don't know the precise measurement of your normal body temperature. You couldn't officially label this as a fever. It feels like a fever. You can't tell, though. You just tremor violently atop the sink counter with your head in your knees and hope it stops.

A little groaning click escapes your throat by accident. Stop stop stop. Don't fucking do that. That's embarrassing. And don't you dare don't you dare cry. You need to stop being such an overemotional ass-bucket, not be more of one. What are you even crying over? There's nothing here to cry over. 

Another click jumps from your throat. 

You once, actually, had a civil conversation with Dave, you recall. It was a few days ago you think. Or maybe a few weeks. Humans don't have same vocal abilities as trolls do. They can't growl or anything else. You were making meaningless noises at him, like you would do with your other friends except he couldn't make them back to keep the joke going. Instead, he told you you sound like a cross between a 'cicada'(?) on an overdosage of 'steroids' (?), a motorized two wheel device, and 'satan' (?). 

You suddenly find your self smiling and giggling at the memory but you still despise him. 

Then the smile fades and you bite your lip. Dave and his milky hair and his idiotic shades and his little crooked smile and his crooked mouth that was always a little pinched on one side when he talked. Dave with his drawling accent and gross metaphors and his awkwardly spaced teeth and his self obsessed personality. Dave with his stupid apparent insecurity about his eye color and his incredible, almost impressive, emotional backup and the massive shield of an ego he has slathered all over his body. You detest him. 

You try to check up on him again and he still doesn't answer. 

You glance at the floor and the red fluid has made it to the cabinet below the sink. It's barely a centimeter deep. 

You wrinkle your nose and your stomach feels like it's full of radioactive sludge. You believe this is almost the end of the bubble. You hope it passes soon. 

The sink and mirrors and walls and just about every surface have become covered with scribblings of passive, or not so passive, aggressive graffiti. As has most of the meteor. It could be filed under the concept of impressive. 

You pull a marker from your syladex upon noticing a mark at your feet that you do not believe was there before. 

It's written in violet.

come down (o:

Your heart skips. 

OKAY

You scribble it quickly as though it will matter and as though you can't just message him because he wrote this with his own hand, he came up here and wrote it with his hand. This is his writing. He was looking for you. He actually wants to see you. He wants to talk to you. But when? But when? You'll have to message him. You'll just have to message him. 

You haven't had a lot of talks with him. He's been doing weird things, shifting about, scratching the walls, painting bloody murals, living in the vents, whispering to the air and speaking to the lifeless. You can't find him often. Only when he wants you to find him.

You pull your palmhusk back out and find his contact. 

\-----CG began trolling TC at 02:44 AM-----

CG: GAMZEE. HEY, ASSMUNCH, ARE YOU THERE?

\-----TC is idle-----

CG: I GOT YOUR MESSAGE... THING.  
CG: MESSAGE ME BACK, OKAY?

\-----TC is idle-----

CG: WHENEVER YOU'RE THERE. 

\-----TC is idle-----

You stare at the message momentarily, then you exit the application. You scroll through your palmhusk a few times before reterning to the conversation, just to check. You would've gotten a notification if he'd responded, but you just want to check.

You go back to aimlessly scrolling through the application list as though anything new or interesting might spark up. You click on a random game and flick through the first level casually until you die on the second, which if you'd been pay attention or if you gave half a shit about it would've infuriated you to know end.

You go back to the chat and he's still idle. How long has it been? Only two minutes. Okay, okay. Stop being so impatient. He can't always answer. Be patient.

You sit back against the grimy, scrawl coated, mirrors. They're icy on your back, even through your sweatshirt and t-shirt together. The whole block is cold, actually.

You wonder if it's being done on purpose. In a meeting that you'd called to establish some rules after the first couple of days with the humans, Rose had suggested that they alter the temperature during periods of time that could constitute as days and nights, to have some change in environment to make everything feel less monotonous. You largely regarded the plan as stupid, but according to your calender, it's approaching when the third dark season would be and the temperature is appropriate. 

It's also apparently almost human winter, so it works for everyone involved. 

Except that you could really use somewhere warm at the moment.

You'd like to return to your respiteblock, but you're not too big on the idea of walking through the red fluids blanketing the floor, no matter how illusionary and no matter how short the walk.

You don't want to touch it. You don't want anything to do with it. 

You pick at the rubber of your shoes. 

The propsit stains on the walls are starting to fade a little bit, though. Maybe the red will start to dissipate soon. 

You glance at the other side of the room at the tubs again and think that you'd really like to take a bath once the bubble clears out. You'd like the warmth on your skin. You'd like to be in the water. You'd like the spout to fill the tub while the roar of the water fills the silence. 

Maybe you'll bring cakes and sweets and indulge yourself and invite no one. Maybe you'll relax in the warmth and let it fill you. You could melt into the water and lose yourself to the incredible vastness of your mind and wander in memories of real grass and trees and star-soaked skies. You could slip into the comfort of your wasted home. 

You could have a hive to yourself again. You could care for your lusus and he'd care back and he'd hunt for you. You'd eat real meat. You'd go with him on trips to the sea, to the shore that was in all honesty considered pretty shady and was usually littered with sea trash. You'd go with him on trips to the sea and the water would hold you. 

There were a few higher blood castes there and they'd glance at you and probably brush you off to be about two sweeps younger than your actual age and generally leave you be. Your lusus would swim into the deep and return later. 

You'd get clams. You'd stamp on the sand where they left little holes and they'd spit and you'd dig and they'd each be about the size of your head once you found them.

You'd gather about two dozen and eat them for several days. 

Your lusus would return with fish and you'd go home and freeze it for after the clams were gone. You'd be tired and the sun would start to rise and you'd make it inside just as it was starting to get bright.

You'd talk to your friends. You'd generally, you recall, be a jerk to your friends. You were always a jerk to your friends. You'd be a jerk to Sollux, who is gone for now. You'd be a jerk to Terezi, who hasn't spoken to you in perigees. You'd be an asshole in general and no matter what in you tells you to stop, you keep going and can't seem to get a hold of yourself.

You'd end up nothing but fire and an entire star system of impulse and volatility and you'd be so caught up in your ability to destroy that you'd never ask if you should and you'd never wonder if there was something else you should be doing. 

You'd never think of any of them leaving. They'd always be there. But you'd also have to keep them at a distance. You'd have to keep them away and keep them close and hold them at arm's length, apparently over a cliff's edge just incase. 

Don't ever let them touch you, whatever you do. Don't give the chance. Don't give them the opportunity. Whatever you do, whatever you do. Don't let them touch you.

You'd leave your hive with your lusus and he'd crowd you with his size. He'd tower over you with spines down his back and claws bared, covered in protective chitin. He'd never let anyone touch you. He'd never let anything hurt you. He'd never let you bleed. He'd be vicious and he'd wreck any animal that thought you didn't belong in its territory. 

And no one would ever touch you and it'd be safer that way.

Because one day they would. One day you'd be stuck with them alone. One day you'd love them and then and then and then...

And then you'd never know what to do. You couldn't let them touch you. You couldn't let them top you. You couldn't let them think you were below them. You are not at the bottom. You are not at the top. You have no placement. You are nowhere. You do not exist yet. You have to make yourself exist. 

And as soon as you do, as soon as you exist, they break apart. They break, they break. They split and crack and bleed bleed bleed. They bleed so profusely that no tourniquet could ever wrap the wound tight enough and then they're sent across the room in a flash of white light, smashing into the wall in a spray of yellow, stomachs burst with a splash of pink and emerald, smashed to green and blue bits, dripping mad, mad, purple, stabbed into sprays of blue and brown, cut into a wave of violet as their bodies drop in sick heaps to the floor with bone shattering thunks. 

And you'd shake uncontrollably for hours and hours. You'd yell and they wouldn't listen. They never listen. And you would be completely shattered.

And you'd find yourself in an identical state of your current one where your whole body tremors and your stomach is in such tight knots that you want nothing more than to throw up just to make it stop. You think you have a fever. You're not sure.

You grip your knees with whitened knuckles and you rock and shake and you can't stop shaking. You just can't stop. You bite into your arm as hard as you can and your teeth are sharp and tear straight through your hoodie.

You don't think you can breathe. You want to throw up. You want it to stop. You want to be better. You don't want to do this. You don't want this. You don't want this. You want it to stop. You want to feel better. You want to feel okay. You don't want to feel. You want it to stop. You want to set yourself on fire and drown in a boiling sea. 

You don't know how to breathe. Maybe you're already dead. Maybe that's why this bubble won't just drift off. It's yours, anyway. It's one of yours. It's got prospit's gold and it's dyed with the same carmine red as your innards. 

You can't breathe. You can't breathe. Your heartbeat is in every inch of your muscles and skin and it's soaking your bones to the marrow and you can't make it STOP.

It does not occur to you that you're screaming until there are cold hands on your shoulder and your blood turns to ice. 

Your fist flies out in a punch immediately and has no trouble coming in contact with the nearest jaw that isn't your own. 

The hands leave your shoulder and someone shouts at you. “It's just me. It's just me!” 

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Go away! Go away!”

You don't look up. Your heart just won't stop hammering. Your stomach feels like its filled with fire. You crush your face into your knees. 

“I wanted to see if you were feeling better! I found some good teas for stomach problems but lost you when the dream bubble came!”

Your friends are ripped to bleeding rainbows again and again behind your eyes. The splitting of skin, the smashing of heads, the cracking of bones as they break break break.

All because you decided to exist.

“Dammit, shush, please. Please shush.”

“Shut up! Shut up! Get out! Go away! Fuck you! Get out!”

Why do you exist? Why? Why? Why?

“Shush. Please just shush. Shush. What's wrong? What's wrong? Are you in pain?” 

“Shut up! You're so fucking stupid! Get out! Did you fucking hear me? Are you fucking stupid? Are you fucking deaf? Get out! Get out! Get the fuck out!!”

“Please calm down. Please just breathe. It's okay. It's going to be alright.”

“How fucking stupid are you? I said get out! I said get out!” 

There are cold hands on you again. They're touching you. They're touching you. They're not supposed to touch you. You can't exist. They'll break. They'll break. They'll die.

“I'm not stupid and I hear you just fine. Do you hear me at all? You need to take a deep breath.”

You can't. You can't. You don't know how.

“Don't fucking touch me! Get out! Get out!”

You can't breathe. You can't. 

“Breathe. Just breathe. You're going to be alright. Just breathe, please.”

“Shut up.”

“Look at me.”

“Go away...”

“Look at me!”

“Stop....”

“Look at me!”

You stop speaking and try to recall how to unwind your arms from the top of your head. 

“Look at me...”

Her voice is softer. 

“Please look at me.” 

You pull your head from the safety of your hands and knees. Your eyes sting and her glow is lost in the bright florescence of the lights above and she looks so much older. Her eyes are confused and you can't bring yourself to meet them. Her horns are tall and curved with an elegance you have never seen matched, which as well could be said for the rest of her being. 

There's a trickle of jade running out of her nose and down her lips. 

You only know how to break things.

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so fucking sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so so sorry.”

She sighs. 

“I don't know what to do about you.”

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I'm so sorry.”

She sits up on the counter next to you. Her shoes are dripping with blood. 

“I know you are...” she says. She sounds disappointed, though, and you can't miss it and you don't know how to do anything but cry.

“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

“I know, I know,” she says. You feel her cool arms encircle you again and you are pressed into the safety of her body.

“I'm so fucking sorry. I'm so fucking sorry.”

She rubs her hand over your shoulder over and over and over again. You don't want to look at her face, but you can't stop a glance because you've never seen her cry before and that one thin tear carries the destructive energy of a violently dying star. 

You don't know what to do and you can't fix yourself. 

You put your arms around her in return. You can't fix what you did, though. You can never take these things back. You don't know what to do. You just shake and hold her and try not to be sick on her.

“I'm going to talk to you more often,” she says. “Maybe, we can figure out how to get you to learn how to calm down.” 

You breathe. You breathe.

“Moirails are supposed calm you down,” you say.

“Yes, but it's a good skill to learn to not be completely dependent on a moirail,” she states. “It'll be good for you. It might help you feel better.” 

You swallow.

“I think it's a skill you need.” 

You don't think it'll help. 

“Let's go get some tea, for now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So inspiration comes from the recent thing thats been happening to me where all of my anxiety symptoms are physical and i keep going to the doctor thinking im sick and then there's nothing wrong


	3. Chapter 3

Kanaya's block is soft. It's filled with soft, warm, light, though brighter than you're used to, soft blankets, soft furniture and soft rugs. There is an abundance of fabric, some neatly folded and others thrown into cascading ripples that flood the floor. 

The dream bubble seems to have left this area. 

She has a mattress covered in blankets tucked into a corner. It's Kanaya's and therefore it's draped in soft fleece of bright colors and plush comforters and underused pillows. It's Kanaya's but she left you here on it, told you to lay down while she went to prepare tea.

You stare from what feels like basically the floor, eyes haphazardly glancing off of every surface in the room. You are hesitant to wrap yourself in the blankets and let the softness claim you. They are not your blankets. This is not your bed. You feel like you shouldn't touch them. 

Your heart is still beating too fast. You don't know how to make it stop. And your legs feel weak. No, no, your whole body feels weak. You occasionally, as the minutes pass, find yourself rigid with shivers. Your joints are locked and you're stiff as a board, but you're shaking like you're cold.

You might be cold. You're not sure. 

You just stare at the fabric, at the furniture, at her unused and emptied recouprecoon, at her little ceramic figurines of various beasts that stand in a fortified and protective line above her sewing table. They rear their heads and bare their claws and tails and mighty wings. They screech and roar in a permanently fixated stances that they will hold for eternity, forever showcasing their fearsome might to anyone who looks.

Three of them are mothergrubs. A couple are lindwurms, wingless dragons on two legs. Some of them are trunk beasts with large swirling tusks. A few are sea snakes. One is a true dragon. There are several meowbeasts and a large number of avian creatures that you don't recognize by specific name. 

They're painted bright with rainbow furs and feathers, elaborate designs that do not appear in nature. They are like Gods of their shelf, not bound to appear as anything less than their ultimate state of perfection. They are crafted finely and painted with bright pigments, suspiciously identical to the colors of the castes. They look shiny and smooth and you'd like to hold them in your fingers, feel the coolness, touch their claws, their teeth, their life-like limbs frozen in perfection. 

Kanaya returns without a word. Her footsteps are quiet. She hands you a mug and it's warm in your hands. She kicks off her shoes to free her palely glowing feet and sits down next to you.

That glow envelopes her skin, broken up only by the black polish on her nails. Her clothing does not fully encase it, allowing light to spill from between the fibers. There is a subtle forrest of tiny lights in her sweater, with a large dead clearing where her naval should be. She is made of something unreal, of the sky and the moons and something else entirely.

You sit up and let the warmth of the tea flood you. She plays with the hem of her skirt, smooths out the fabric, curls her knees to her chest. Her toes grip and ungrip the sheets on the bed. Your head falls against the wall with a painless thunk. You focus on breathing and try to ignore what your heart rate is telling you.

She puts her arm around you and pulls you into her side. Her hand travels to your forehead for a few seconds, and then to the back of your neck. Then she rubs your arm and shoulder.

"I'm not sure what to say here," she says. "It would appear that you are in fact physically ill, but I cannot tell if that is because you are under acute mental distress, or if it is reversed, with this additional anxiety all coming from you being physically ill." 

You swallow more tea. You are unable to tear your eyes away from the blank spot on her sweater, the dead clearing with no light, the black hole in the center of the galaxy that swallows everything up. It's dead and hollow and you know what's not there but you don't know what IS there. It makes your brain twist up and you're getting very tired of this sudden influx of overwhelming worry. 

"I didn't feel like this 48 hours ago," you say. "I mean, I've felt like shit for the entire time we've been here, but this has gotten dumb." 

You're shaking in a manner you consider rather weird, in that it's just such hard shaking. Your body is acting like it's so much colder than it is. Kanaya is probably not helping. She's not exactly warm. She's not icecold, either, just cool enough to be noticeable. You like her comfort, though. You aren't sure how to remedy this. You'll probably stop noticing soon, or so you hope.

"I think that either way, it would be wise for you to be resting as much as possible," she says. 

"No, I have fuckawful dreams every time I go to sleep," you say. 

She rubs your shoulder and pulls you tighter for just a second. Your heart beat might swallow you whole, you think. Your heart beat could drink you like a black hole drinks light. You lean against her. You find yourself being scratched up from the inside out with incredible desperation. You want her to hold you tighter and tighter, tight enough to stop your heart, tight enough to slow the beating, just tighter tighter, tight enough to restrain reality from clutching at your skin. 

"At least lie down," she says. "You're safe. Everything around you, presently, is safe."

Except that everything inside of you is stunned and paralyzed. It's like your guts are all out of place and you're trying so hard to put them back in the right order, but they don't want to go back the way they were. And now they're not fitting quite right inside your torso so you can't move without it hurting. So you don't move. 

You do not feel safe. You feel like you're caught in a rose bush. 

You inhale the same air you've been inhaling for perigees now. You exhale nothing useful. 

You used to have a home. You used to have a lusus. Your friends used to have a home. Your friends used to have a lusus.

You broke everything. 

A long, long, whine escapes your throat and your fingers sting with your pulse. She pulls you even closer and pets the back of your head. She holds you tight and she's nice and cool and her arms are more than you'd ever expected and it is so violently comforting. 

You become aware that something in you has fallen gravely ill and you have no idea what to do to bring it back.

Your veins all sting with cold and you finally, finally, after holding onto the edge with whitened and tired fingers for so, so, so, long, after your nails have dug deep into the ground in all of your desperation, after all this time, and all this aching and fighting with all these snakes writhing in your belly, and all these knives in the back of your brain, you finally let go and basically fucking die on her shoulder. 

You fall. You lose. You're gone gone gone, screaming and scared. You fall into an ocean and drown in yourself for the longest time. You miss the transition where you both move to lie down. You miss the part where she wraps you in blankets. You don't recall when you fell asleep against her chest. 

You know you burst, though. You know that everything came out, all over her and all down your front and all over the floor; just words and screaming and garbled nonsense. 

"I killed them I killed them they're dead I killed them I sent them after him I could've gone I killed them theyre dead theyre dead I watched you die I could've done something he killed them he killed her she's dead and I... I... I... could've stopped them could've fixed it I just stood there and they're dead they're dead they're all dead and it wasn't even worth it it'll never be worth it they're dead they're dead I killed them they're dead!!"

She shushes you and she holds you and you feel her lips on your forehead and you killed them you killed them you killed them you ripped them all to rainbow shreds and you'll never get them back.

It just goes and goes and goes, unleashing an entire universe into the air. It twists and convulses in your lungs and on your tongue and you can't seem to figure out how to properly get it out. You can never get it all out. You'll never get it all out. 

You let it gush until you're too tired to pull any more words from the confines of your ribcage, but even then it feels like there's just so much more. It only feels lighter because now you're too tired to feel correctly.

You sleep wrapped up in her blankets and limbs. 

You don't recall your dream when you wake up, thank God. 

And you feel like you could sleep forever. 

Little rolling warbles gurgle up from your throat as you lay there in otherwise ringing silence. 

"You didn't kill them," she says after a while. She swallows. "They are not dead because of your negligence. And I can tell you that I think about my own decisions as well. I think about weather or not killing him was important to the mission or out of rage. And I know that he would've only done more damage had I not stopped him."

She pets your hair with gentle fingers and a soothing touch.

"And I do feel guilt. Sometimes it is horribly overwhelming and I feel that I can't go any further with it, because it is just so incredibly heavy."

Her voice is softer than you've ever heard it. She takes a shuddering breath and you feel the anguish in her ribcage as she inhales and her chest hitches against the air. 

"Because he was a person, whom I considered myself friends with, which just makes me ill in a thousand more ways, and then I can't tell if I feel guilty or betrayed. And then I don't know where I am anymore."

She stares at the wall and her pets become idle.

"Except that I think that it was the best option and that I've just had too much time to think about it all." 

Little fleeting warbles are on her tongue and in the back of her mouth. They're high pitched and they sting.

"Terezi most definitely feels it too. She won't speak to me much, but she seems like she's completely gone most of the time," she says. "I've found her getting sick multiple times, but she won't speak." 

Your stomach sinks even deeper somehow. 

"But Sollux and Aradia are still out there," she reminds you, with a subtle hopefulness to her tone.

You wish they'd stayed. 

"There is something beyond this," she says. "This is not the end. We will continue on after this. We must figure out how to bring ourselves there."

Your fingers are bound with hers, you notice. 

"We will be alright."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im not sure i actually achieved the character development i wanted to achieve here? Or, im not sure its obvious enough? i dont know how i feel about this fic. I had intentions in this with what i wanted to say about the characters beyond just angst and im not sure if it came through

**Author's Note:**

> i plan to continue this but sorry bout the cliffhanger


End file.
